At the end of December, I read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I didn’t love this story. The main character, Madeleine, was self-absorbed, over-privileged and uninspiring. Eugenides, usually so brilliant in exposing a character’s layers over time, failed to peel back enough to make me care about her.

I can’t remember all of the thoughts I had on this novel, so I may have to come back to this one later.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

I’ve read a great deal of Margaret Atwood, and those of you that have read The Robber Bride or Cats Eye can understand my devotion to her stories. The female characters are written with a hundred facets, never fully understood but complete in their humanity. You can recognize something in them; even the most vile of characters contain something you’ve seen in the mirror.

I would not go into this novel expecting a solution to the core mystery (it is based on true events; a wealthy man and his housekeeper were murdered, possibly by the maid and her supposed lover, the stable boy). I am sure that Atwood has her own opinion of what happened, but she takes care not to share that with the reader. The story is told in flashback partially by the maid, Grace Marks (convicted of the murder), whilst she is in a psychiatric prison; the second narrator is a psychiatrist, Simon Jordan, who has become interested in the case and conducts exploratory interviews with Grace.

I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone that wishes to read this; but I felt it was a little too pat. I wanted a definitive explanation for the events, and instead you are left to determine for yourself – which can work for some stories;  I didn’t think it worked here. Viewed alone as Grace’s version of the story, supplied by her own truths and fictions, it is an interesting character study. Leave it at that and you can enjoy it.

After these, I zipped through three or four Agatha Christie Poirot novels (for the 100th time, LOL).  Then, I was ready for a new read, so I started The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse edited by Jack Zipes

 I’ve read Siddartha about 20 times; it is one of my favorite novels. This collection features 22 of his most fantastical concoctions, all told with the same simple yet romantic prose.  The translation wasn’t perfect – I am willing to bet that some of the magic was lost (yet another reason to learn German!). But, the stories are interesting and some are thought-provoking; ‘If the War Continues’ and ‘Strange News from another Planet’ are especially relevant for today’s political and social climate.

From fairy tales to a novel about storytellers seemed a natural enough transistion, so now I’m reading The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine . So far…very good.